Surface deformation after Chile earthquake

September 25, 2015

On September 16th, 2015 a magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck just off the coast of Chile. It was more energetic than the Nepal Earthquake earlier this year, but resulted in far less casualties because Chile has more frequent large earthquakes and is better prepared. For the Nepal Earthquake we showed you a map from NASA showing surface deformation resulting from the earthquake.

The ‘Earthquakes’ layer in Google Earth does not show the Chilean earthquake yet. However, the USGS provides up to date KML files on this web page

We chose this one, which shows all earthquakes over magnitude 2.5 from the last 30 days.

As you can see below, the main quake (largest circle) was further south than you might have expected it to be based on the deformation pattern. The cluster of aftershocks, however, do seem to centre on the same location as the deformation pattern.

About Timothy Whitehead

Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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